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Like tobacco, carbon emissions and sugar, we can expect the harm to human health and the environment caused by the production and consumption of meat to be mitigated by 'sin taxes'in the next five to ten years.
"Sin taxes" on meat to reduce its huge impact on climate change and human health look inevitable, according to analysts for investors managing more than $4tn of assets.
The global livestock industry causes 15% of all global greenhouse gas emissions and meat consumption is rising around the world, but dangerous climate change cannot be avoided unless this is radically curbed. Furthermore, many people already eat far too much meat, seriously damaging their health and incurring huge costs. Livestock also drive other problems, such as water pollution and antibiotic resistance.
A new analysis from the investor network Farm Animal Investment Risk and Return (Fairr) Initiative argues that meat is therefore now following the same path as tobacco, carbon emissions and sugar towards a sin tax, a levy on harmful products to cut consumption. Meat taxes have already been discussed in parliaments in Germany, Denmark and Sweden, the analysis points out, and China's government has cut its recommended maximum meat consumption by 45% in 2016.
Would you pay a "meat tax" or would you change your eating habits?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 12 2017, @04:24AM (1 child)
Right idea but your number is WAY off.
It's more like 99.95 percent.
The current threshold is $5.5 million--or $11 million for married couples. [google.com]
Reactionaries (who consume the crap coming out of Faux Noise|Breitbart) like to call it The Death Tax.
(Dead people don't pay taxes.)
A better name would be The Spoiled Rich Kids' Tax.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 12 2017, @07:23AM
The trouble isn't just that.
It's that it amounts to a corporate giveaway.
If it's a family where the assets are mostly liquid, they shrug their shoulders, take a short term loan secured with some bonds or something, and pay it off. Done.
The real screwups are the land rich/cash poor family farms that aren't incorporated, and get torn up. This is an actively supported mechanism for breaking those up because of a pro-corporate bias in the government. The families have to sell their single major asset at firesale prices, or go into deep debt (that will probably break them) just to satisfy the tax man.
I'll support estate taxes the very nanosecond they force all corporations to pay the exact same taxes, at the exact same rate, every 30 years as counted from their date of incorporation. Non-profits and co-ops as well.
Until then it's a pro-corporate shakedown and we shouldn't support that.